Odd gnome login behavior

["John P. Verel" <jverel home com>]

Upon first booting up and logging into my user account (not root),
sometimes (not always), the login will look fine, but then the screen
will go black, putting me back to the login.  Second time, I get in.

Sometimes when I login to my user account, the splash screen appears and
I'm in right away.  Sometimes, it hangs for 5-10 seconds before the
splash screen appears and them I'm in.  Sometimes not.

This does not occur in root.  It does not occur in a dummy account I set
up to test for this problem.

If I clean out ~/.gnome/proxy* type files that get left over, it seems
to have no effect.

This is all very odd.  Any suggestions on where to go next to fix it?
-- 
John P. Verel
Norwalk, CT